FIS-ASP Customer Story
With FIS-ASP, a smooth migration of the central SAP systems in a greenfield approach to the new product generation S/4HANA in the cloud was successfully carried out.
BLOOMING IT LANDSCAPES
AT GARDEN SPECIALIST
From SAP HEC to service at FIS-ASP with Microsoft AZURE
When hosting S/4HANA systems in the cloud, the service level of the
provider matters. With FIS-ASP, the Dehner company group reaches a new level.
The family-owned Dehner company is a company group operating on a Europe-wide basis with headquarters in Rain am Lech, Bavaria. Founded as a two-person company in 1947, Dehner is now the leading cross-channel merchant of the “green industry” with more than 5,700 employees.
In the future as well, Dehner intends to grow dynamically and continuously expand its own position as a leading cross-channel provider in the “green industry”. For this purpose, the company is consistently expanding its digital offers and therefore requires the suitable technological platform for mapping its business processes. With SAP, Dehner Holding relies on the market-leading ERP solution.
Conquering new markets requires continuous innovation and a future-proof system landscape. Therefore, Dehner has launched the largest change project within the company group in late summer 2021: the migration of its central SAP systems to the new S/4HANA product generation in the cloud by using the “Greenfield approach”.
However, not all clouds are the same – the provider by whom the SAP systems are operated has a significant influence on how they contribute to increased business success. The form of hosting may become a component for success when efficiently using S/4HANA. Disadvantages arise when parallel development projects are slowed down due to the fact that system upgrades take too long or service response times do not meet expectations.
Each cloud operating model stands and falls
with the service
Dehner decided in favor of the AZURE operation via FIS-ASP to achieve the project goals faster and more efficiently. The migration from the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC*) was started with this in mind. Dehner’s S/4HANA systems were running on Microsoft AZURE hardware from the beginning, i.e. in Microsoft’s public cloud infrastructure. The migration work consisted of extracting the complex SAP landscape from HEC and transferring it to the AZURE areas managed by FIS-ASP.
These systems are no longer monitored and maintained from the Far East but by FIS-ASP service employees based in Main-Franconia.
*HEC is a cloud platform provided and operated by SAP that takes over the operation of the customers infrastructure for SAP applications.
“For operations at the hyperscaler as well, a coherent understanding of service is important for collaboration and project success. Reliability and implementa-tion speed remain crucial. Administration and pragmatic way of working require balance. FIS-ASP as a proven expert in the field of managed services for SAP on AZURE is known for high service quality.
Smooth migration despite parallel projects
A joint project team consisting of Dehner and FIS-ASP experts was formed to guarantee a clean and fast execution of the cloud migration. The parallel S/4HANA implementation at the Dehner Garden Centers (project name BAMbuS) could be taken into account during the detailed planning of the migration project. With best practices from Microsoft, SAP and FIS-ASP, the migration happened smoothly and within the planned timeframe between September and December 2022 – a perfect example of how professionally FIS-ASP deals with the respective business requirements of its customers. Since then, the Dehner SAP landscapes hosted on AZURE have been supported by FIS-ASP.
Fixed contact persons, quick response time
In concrete terms, the FIS-ASP service for Dehner means: Whoever is the contact person for the customer during the migration project will remain the contact person later during operation. The IT department has known contact persons at its provider and they respond to requests within a very short time. For example, S/4HANA upgrades run twice as fast compared to the previous service.
M365 expertise and further additional qualification
“The AZURE cloud and SAP application know-how of FIS-ASP is joined by a proven Microsoft 365 expertise we can rely on if required. In addition, there is the possibility of combining our systems with the highly available data centers of FIS-ASP.”
This means in clear words: The garden specialist can shut down additional servers as planned and outsource its own hardware to FIS-ASP at the same time. Dehner then operates its virtual machines as a co-location in Grafenrheinfeld while they are connected to the SAP systems on AZURE in a hybrid operation.
With FIS-ASP, the Dehner company group has a partner that helps to combine the advantages of the public cloud with individual support and service. A broad service portfolio gives the customer flexibility. Risk is reduced due to the service provider’s long-term experience in comprehensive SAP service.
By working together, the Dehner company group saves costs and can concentrate on its core competencies, which results in increased efficiency and productivity.
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